


A Sheep's Face, A Wolf's Teeth

by Escapist_Velocity



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Werewolf AU, alternative universe, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23368546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escapist_Velocity/pseuds/Escapist_Velocity
Summary: Karen can smell the blood on him, sometimes. See the hidden injuries, smell the lies. But she doesn't ask.  She can't afford to; she has secrets of her own to keep.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	A Sheep's Face, A Wolf's Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. This is a oneshot that I never could get the inspiration to turn into a full story, but I thought I'd just go ahead and post it anyway. It might bring some enjoyment to someone and, y'know, we could all use some nice escapist fanfiction right now.

Karen stares out the window into the sky, where the pale ghost of the moon hangs like the sword of Damocles over the city. She’s gone too long without Changing. It was starting to pull at her, worry at her, like the moon at the tides.

A King Tide is rising.

Karen lets out a breath slowly, almost meditatively, and looks down at her desk. The Zdrazil file is open in front of her, waiting for the last couple documents that the printer is just finishing spitting out. She stands and walks over to the machine with slow, measured movements. Her hands pluck up the papers like they’re blown glass, and she returns just as carefully to her desk.

She glances at the clock.

Ten ‘til five.

Almost there.

_ God damn, Page, you idiot. You’re cutting it too damn close this time. _

She lines up the edges of the papers with far more care and attention than the task required. She folds over the top of the file folder, pressing it down like it might pop back open. Slowly and carefully, she picks the file up, brings it to the filing cabinet, and slides it into the last drawer with the rest of Z’s. Returning to her seat, she exhales and looks at the clock again.

4:52.

God  _ damn  _ it.

“Miss Page?”

Karen jumps and squeaks. The man standing in front of her desk makes an apologetic grimace. It was one of the interns, the handsome blind one that Karen swears sometimes smells like blood. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, I’m sorry, I was drifting,” she assures him automatically, then straightens. “What can I do for you, Mr. Murdock?”

“I was hoping you could pull together some files for me?” he asks, voice all calm, polite professionalism. There’s a bruise on his jaw that he’s hidden with makeup (she wonders if he’d done it himself), though the makeup can’t quite hide the little cut in the middle of it. Everyone else probably can’t see the bruise and so dismiss the cut as a shaving mishap, but Karen can tell and she’s pretty sure that the bruise and cut combo came from someone punching Mr. Murdock with a ring-bearing fist.

She takes the slip of paper Murdock holds out in her general direction, and glances at it. His handwriting isn’t atrocious, unlike some of the partners who don’t have the excuse of being blind, just sort of spidery and slanted. Completely legible, though.

It’s a list of five names. “Of course. Do you need them before you leave for the evening?”

Murdock gives her a smile. “No. Before end of day tomorrow is fine. If that’s enough time.”

“Sure, that’s fine. I’ll have it for you tomorrow,” Karen says, laying the paper down where it’ll catch her eye first thing in the morning.

“Thank you,” Murdock says. He hesitates, like he wants to say something else, but he just nods vaguely and leaves. Karen looks at the clock.

5:56.

Fuck it, close enough. Karen gathers her purse and coat and almost runs out of Landman & Zack. She walks double-time down the street. A cab would get her home faster, but a cab would also be a small, confined space reeking of other people and God knows what else. Better to be walking.

It’s November, so the sun sets before she gets home. All the better—she can’t wait much longer. She opens the window in her kitchen that leads to the fire-escape, grabs a neatly bundled set of sweats, then strips out of her work clothes and undergarments. Standing naked in her kitchen, she closes her eyes and lets the Change overtake her.

It’s not easy, or smooth. Nobody really knows where lycanthropy came from—the two main theories are magic or alien pathogen. The latter was almost a joke until the Avengers happened and suddenly there were Asgardians and… whatever those crazy invader-aliens were. Then ‘alien disease’ became a lot more feasible. If it is a disease—which honestly makes a lot of sense—it is not a mild one. If it is magic, it’s not polished or elegant. It’s a slow death. It’s a curse. The Change is violent and messy and ugly. Karen’s bones break and reform, her muscles tear and heal, her skin rips apart to make way for fur.

She’s left lying on the cool floor, panting as the ringing in her ears abates and her vision fades back in from the white blaze of agony. Finally, she scrambles to her feet and shakes the last tingles of the Change from her fur.

If she had been anyone else, running around the city as a wolf would be a very terrible idea, but nobody who sees her ever thinks “good God, that’s a werewolf!” Nobody even thinks she’s a wolf, honestly, because she looks like a dog, if a really big one. She’s even patterned like a brindle German Shepherd.

Karen picks up her bundle of sweats in her mouth and jumps out the window. The fire-escape clanks and creaks under her paws as she descends it in a couple of leaps. Once she reaches the alleyway below, she drops her clothes in the metal box she’d tucked behind the dumpster for this very purpose.

And then she’s off, keeping to the shadows, but moving smoothly and rapidly. She’s used to city-living now, and knows how to move unseen. Just because she doesn’t look like a wolf doesn’t mean she wants to deal with animal control and getting sent to a pound. She doesn’t have anyone to come and bail her out anymore. If she gets caught, she’s shit out of luck.

So she just won’t get caught.

There’s a park a few blocks away from her apartment that she likes going to. It has a rather large population of rabbits and is decently wooded, so that she can go mostly unseen. Once the sun sets there usually aren’t too many people in the park, just a couple risk-taking joggers and the odd drug-dealer. Nobody who reports a large dog running around off-leash, anyway.

Karen stalks through the bushes that line the running path, sniffing and listening closely. When she finally comes across a rabbit—standing stock still and pretending to be just another rock no prey here—she deliberately misses on her first pounce. The rabbit takes off running, and Karen hurtles along after it, the joy of the chase expanding like a bubble in her chest.

Eventually, she gets tired of chasing and catches one of the rabbits, an older male that the colony won’t miss too much. She eats it, because the chase alone won’t settle the beast inside her and if she must kill rabbits to let her wolf fit back inside her human skin, she isn’t going to be wasteful. Besides, it takes a great deal to keep a werewolf fed, and her grocery bill could do with a little trimming.

When she’s done, she trots through the park, weaving between trees, jumping over bushes and benches. Mostly she wants to give her stomach some time to digest the rabbit—she’d shifted back to human only a few minutes after eating, once, and had been violently ill. She still isn’t sure why, but she hadn’t tried for a repeat performance. 

Also, because she had gone for so long without Changing, she has a lot of energy to blow off. Even though it is  _ her _ , whether in human or wolf skin, it sometimes seems as if her wolf is a different entity. If she keeps it caged up for too long, it demands a longer time when let out. If she Changes back to human now, she will probably feel just as itchy and impatient and uncomfortable as before. Better to let her wolf run itself down.

It’s nearly two a.m. when she hauls her sweat-suited human body back through her open kitchen window. She is tired and achy from the Change back, but she’s also riding a nice endorphin buzz. She drains two glasses of water, brushes her teeth, and falls into bed.

* * *

She’s still tired when she wakes up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready for work, but there’s no help for it. She showers, dresses, and shoves some toast down her throat before schlepping herself out the door. She walks at a much more sedate pace than last night, and stops for a coffee (with copious amounts of sugar and chocolate in it; she needs the boost) along the way. By the time she reaches Landman & Zack, she’s completely awake and the sleepy-stiffness is gone from her muscles.

Murdock’s list is waiting for her on her desk, and she plucks it up, humming to herself as she wheels up to her computer. She sticks the list onto the side of the monitor with a bit of tape, and logs in. The company has an internal database, electronic files to complement the paper ones filling the room behind Karen’s desk. But all of those are plain print, and Murdock can’t read them. So Karen pulls up the electronic files, converts them to braille, and sends them to the braille printer. A week into Murdock’s internship, Karen had gotten tired of feeling guilty every time she’d had to give him ink files for his sighted office-mate to read to him. She’d sent a number of requests to the pertinent departments to buy a braille printer, but as with anything bureaucratic, it’d been taking forever for them to do anything about it. Karen had finally gotten tired of waiting and went out and bought one herself.

She’d been furiously indignant over how expensive it had been. Not that it had mattered too much, since she’d pressed for (and gotten) reimbursement, but it was the principle of the thing. How could they claim accessibility if buying all the tools to make things accessible would beggar most people?

Karen cracks her neck and sighs, standing over the printer as it hums quietly. As much as her… ah… “condition” makes things difficult, she doesn’t envy Murdock his hardships. At least nobody judges her immediately because she’s a werewolf (which, granted, is because they don’t  _ know _ she is one). Murdock, though, seems to have fought for every scrap of acknowledgement he receives. Apparently other people look at him and see someone who’s helpless, vulnerable, weak.

Probably he doesn’t help this image of himself with the lies he tells about his more visible injuries. A split-lip is from walking into a door. The scraped knuckles from falling while taking out the trash. A cut over one eyebrow—complete with two stitches—from a bike messenger clipping him.

Karen can smell the lies even if Murdock delivers them with a straight face and even voice. And she can smell the blood and, occasionally, gunpowder on him that’ve  _ almost _ been washed away. There is much more to Matthew M. Murdock, Esquire, than meets the eye. He doesn’t  _ smell  _ like a werewolf, but neither does Karen, thanks to a charm she’d bought off a witch. If she is hiding the musk of fur and the intangible, nose-tickling, lingering hint of the Change that usually surrounds werewolves, then he may very well be as well.

It’s not a comforting thought. Karen came to Hell’s Kitchen to  _ avoid  _ other wolves.

She fiddles with her charm bracelet (the witch she’d bought it from hadn’t been able to stop giggling over the pun). When she wears it, she can’t smell the wolf on herself. It had cost a pretty penny, but it had been worth it. Wolves are territorial, and there are a couple packs in New York. None of them claim Hell’s Kitchen, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take offense to an undeclared wolf living there. Lone wolves are kind of dangerous, because they don’t have pack oversight or the resources packs have to keep their werewolfy existence secret. They might think Karen’s presence there threatens the safety of their packs, in which case they might: 1) forcibly induct her into a pack, 2) kill her outright, or 3) drive her out.

None of those options sound good to her. Better if nobody realizes what she is.

The printer finally finishes, and Karen scoops up the rather sizeable stack. Returning to her desk, she sorts the documents into individual files, labeling the manila folders with a braille labelmaker. She’d printed them in a text-and-braille format so she could know what she is doing, and so that Murdock could share them with his office-mate, with whom he seems to work in tandem.

Said office-mate is the one who opens the door at Karen’s knock. Their cramped closet-turned-office is visible over his shoulder. Karen smiles. “Good morning Mr. Nelson. I have some files Mr. Murdock requested. Is he here?”

He is; Karen can smell him, and hear him, but it’s polite to ask. Nelson smiles at her, but it’s a weak shadow of his usual grin. “Good morning, Miss Page. Matt is here, though you’ll have to forgive him for not getting up.  _ Apparently _ , he lost his cane yesterday and  _ didn’t want to bother me _ , so he tried to walk home by himself, and  _ got clipped by a taxi _ .”

“Foggy,” Matt’s voice is weary and exasperated, but fond.

“Oh my god,” Karen says at the same time, “is he okay?”

“Fine,” Matt interjects before Foggy can respond. He appears behind his office-mate and friend, and Karen can’t help the little gasp that escapes her. Murdock hadn’t bothered with the concealer today, letting the old bruise meld with the long strip of abraded skin turning the side of his face angry red. A cut in his eyebrow is held together by two butterfly sutures. His lip is busted and there’s a new, dark bruise around his eye, peeking out from behind his glasses.

“You don’t look fine,” Karen says numbly. He smells like blood, old and new.

“The nurse said nothing was broken, just some bumps and bruises,” he says lightly. “I imagine it looks worse than it is.”

“Um. Right,” she says dubiously. There’s a moment of awkward silence, and then Foggy clears his throat. “Oh! Ah, I have those files you asked for, Mr. Murdock.”

She places them in the outstretched hand Matt lifts. His fingers brush over the braille labels and he smiles, a real smile that brightens his face and makes him seem younger. It almost distracts her from the injuries.

“Thank you, Miss Page,” he says, warm with sincerity. She remembers the fake, polite smiles he’d given her at first, when she had still been giving him text files and apologies, and then the small, real smile that had slipped onto his face the first time she had put a braille file into his hands. Her mouth curves in a smile automatically.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Murdock,” she says, and Foggy mutters something under his breath like ‘Murdock strikes again.’ Matt shifts a little toward his friend, and while the doorway was too crowded for her to really see, she’s pretty sure he’s just elbowed Foggy in the gut, because the blond intern winces a little and takes a step away from Matt. She blinks at them, and decides to ignore it. “I should get back to my desk. Have a good day, Mr. Murdock, Mr. Nelson.”

They return the well wishes and close the door as Karen walks away. As she does, she hears Matt say: “Foggy. Don’t.”

And Foggy, with fake innocence: “What?”

Karen smiles a little and walks out of range of hearing. She likes the two interns; they have a refreshing comfortableness about them and, because of her sharp ears, she often catches the way they joke and tease each other. They are infinitely preferable to dealing with the privileged, self-important senior partners.

She knows that they both think she’s attractive; she isn’t that oblivious. But neither of them seems likely to do anything about it, despite how much Foggy teases Matt. It’s probably their friendship that keeps them back—neither wants to hurt the other. She’s okay with that—it’s safer for all of them. Karen can’t become too close to anyone, not with the secrets she’s keeping. So she ignores the way Foggy’s pupils dilate when he sees her, the way Matt seems to unconsciously lean ever so slightly toward her when she talks, and hints of attraction that tinge their scents around her.

She can’t quite ignore the other scents that linger around Murdock, though. They’re scents that ping her wolf as well as her hind-brain.  _ Dangerous, dangerous _ . The metallic sweetness of blood, the dry scent of gunpowder, the biting tang of fear-sweat. He’s mixed up in something. Just what, she’s not sure. He doesn’t act like someone who’s being threatened or coerced on a regular basis. His father was a boxer, she’d gathered from overheard conversations; maybe he had taken up the sport himself? But that wouldn’t explain the gunpowder smell. She’s certain that he’s not just going to a shooting range or hunting, either, because the smells that would go along with gunpowder in those instances are absent, and the smells that she  _ can  _ detect along with it on Matt are… worrying.

So, it’s really for the best that they just stay acquaintances. For his sake as much as for hers. Clearly, he has enough problems and doesn’t need to get mixed up in hers.

But she still worries about him. She can’t help it. It’s the same damn compassion that’s gotten her in trouble before.

Karen sighs. The scent of blood, the desire to defend—they press against her and rouse her wolf. She’ll need to run again soon.

One of the senior partners is waiting at her desk when she gets back. A huge project. Permission for over-time for the next week. Hours of research. Karen stares at the pile of folders on her desk.

She should survive until the weekend, she thinks, before she really has to let the wolf out.


End file.
